meander
by cornwallace
Summary: (of a speaker or text) proceed aimlessly or with little purpose.
1. mosey

_ _ _ _  
mosey 

* * *

The engine shuts off just before the old door snaps and creaks open.  
Soft crunch as boots lower from the car to the floor of the desert wasteland.  
Throwing bloody cloth onto the floorboard of the passenger seat behind her, she unholsters her pistol and releases the cylinder. She tucks it between her legs so she don't have to disturb her wounded arm. She just carefully works around her wounded opposite side. She picks out the casings with hammered pins and casually tosses them to the floorboard before replacing them from her belt. She uses the momentum of her hand sliding from one direction to the other to snap the cylinder shut. She knows that's bad for the gun but she don't reckon she'll get much more use out of it anyhow.  
She holsters the weapon.

Fumbling which key to jam into the back of the vehicle. She leaves the keys dangling from the back when she figures right and pops the trunk.  
She winces, picking up the cadaver and walking it several paces away before dropping it in the dirt.  
Turning back, she picks up the gas can and turns it over in the trunk. She grabs her hat out of the passenger seat and puts it on snug before dousing the padded bench and floorboard. She dumps the rest on the hood of the car and she lights a match.

The sun's poking her head over the canyons before she goes to sleep. The tire tracks she carved into the dirt behind her lead up to an inferno for a brief period, as she lights her up and says goodbye to an old friend.  
Heaving as she lifts the cadaver, she moseys off yonder. One tired, pained step at a time.

Now, ya'll might pontificate on the nature of a demon, but as she approaches the ornate open coffin, she aint pontificating much of nothing.  
With some effort, she struggles to unravel the corpse from the ornate rug she wrapped it in. It lands somewhat crossways and she kicks it into place before straining to lift the lid and slide it into place. One nail at a time, she shuts her tight in the flickering lights of the horsefire and the setting sun.

'Aint no settlin' into recursion,' she ponders aloud, hammering in her last nail, sealin' her fate. 'Aint no settlin' into pain like this neither.'  
Her left arm is a constant dead pain down to her elbow, almost like she done rotted out from her shoulder halfway up her neck. She can feel the rot crawling, quite literally, as the dark, living parasites reach from the side of her neck for the sky. Polluting her on upwards and downwards. She walks to the top of the coffin and grabs the chain with her good arm, throwing it over her good shoulder.

'I reckon it's time we mosey on, huh?' she asks the box, not waiting for an answer before dragging it off yonder.  
Aint no road where she's going, no sir or ma'am. Aint no trail. Just one mean son of a bitch they call the desert. And beyond that? Reckoning.

Now, you may pontificate the true nature of a reckoning – but I tell you what, sure as you're born she aint pontificating a damn thing as she drags that corpse in a coffin off into them shadows under them stars.  
The sum of her parts cain't truly be seent by nobody but herself, willing she opens up them eyes she got on the inside.  
Lord willing she opens up them eyes and the creek don't rise.


	2. ramble

_ _ _ _  
ramble 

* * *

Her eyes tired.  
Fingertips pushing the brim of her hat up her forehead as she rubs her eyes with her palms.  
Taking a look in her rear-view mirror, she also takes notice of them bags. She aint slept right since he done her wrong. Nack. That same grinning fang she bore letting everybody know he's up to no good.  
She weren't smiling so much these days. She doesn't find much of nothing funny or worth beaming at.

Stuffing the keys into her satchel, she slaps the lock down on the door and shuts it behind her. Old beat up two seater. Black dented metal shining silver reflections in the basking glow of the sunlight.  
Sometimes, deep down, things aint what they seem.  
You could be sure of that if you knowed what was on Nicolette's mind as she got up out of that car and rambled on into that fortune teller's hut. She was met by a warm glow obscured by tears of erratic cloth hanging from the roof.  
Behind that cloth a lavishly dressed bony and hairless cat sustains the light spilling out in all directions from the center of the hut.

'Ma'am?'  
"I knew you were coming," the cat says, distracted sounding. "Sit, sit."  
'Knowed I was comin', huh? Shiiiit. You's some psychic. Is this how y'greet all the customers, or just the newcomers?"  
"Just the ones I foresee." Her eyes uninterested in the mobian in her physical presence. Her eyes reciprocating the ominous glow of the crystal ball she feels at the warmth of with her open hands. "Nicolette, you are here early."  
'How in tarnation'd you know my fucking name?' Her hand on her pistol.  
"No need to draw that. Yet." Her eyes alive, like fire, she looks up at Nicolette. "You will kill yourself today."  
'Horseshit,' she says, leaning back in her chair and crossing her arms. Looking her dead in the eye. Readjusting her toothpick in the corner of her mouth. There's a screaming demon inside her, but that's a curse most of us bear. 'I'm lookin' for my brother. Nack. Sum'bitch looks just like me, 'cept you know. Without the charm. You seen him in that ball of yers?'  
"I see many things in this ball of mine," she says, nodding at her. Locking eyes. "So can you. Take a look."

Nicolette rolls her eyes and she looks into the confounded thing.  
And her eyes go wide.  
And her eyes get dark.  
And she sees something but not with them eyes but with her soul.  
And in a sense she is released from herself in a way that can't be capacitated by any of us mortal thinkers.  
You could dissect the squirming god in that womb if it weren't for me and you, one might pontificate. But I aint never been that pious.

Three paces from the door of the hut and a match gets lighted. As she casually tosses it behind her the flame whoofs up the place and that there dead cat melts and crumbles into nothing, just like that there worthless ball of hers.  
You might also perceive, if you was one of them spirits or ghosts following after her, that aint nothin' changed.  
As the place heats up she opens up her driving door. This place a thing of the past before her time here is even done. Door slams shut behind her and her trusty steed kicks into action. She reverses before pulling on out and testing her bad faith onward until she finds a gas station. She fills up on gas for both her car and her can. She's ready for what's coming.


	3. spit ii

_ _ _  
spit ii 

* * *

Shook by the snakebite she's in shambles as she's shown. Alliteration.  
Her open mouth dripping blood into a very specific location.  
She cries out as an unsuccessful means of trying to physically ignore it.  
Knees and knuckles trembling, holding her up. With her free hand reaching into the back corner of her mouth where the end of toothpick is hanging out around her molars. Her body stuttering to rip it out and spit a mouthful of blood on the sand. Every tiny splinter of wood resisting her.

It was physics. It was god.  
Now all you preachy types might pontificate on just what I mean by both physics and god. The true suffering was pick she rammed slanted into her jaw. And there was enough blood filling her mouth to fill a gallon jug in an hour.  
Better idols are discovered by some.


	4. roam

_ _ _  
roam 

* * *

'The outer layer of my eye has begun to develop into insect eye-stalks.' Nicolette licks her lips. She can feel the parasites wriggling on the inside of the left side of her mouth.  
Eyes flutter open, or what they can. 'It will not be too long until the devil takes me.'

She cannot see through the stalks and stalks of eyes but she is aware of their presence.  
She tries to blink but she only winks at nothing.

It aint the inevitability of it all that locks her knees into place sometimes. It's the familiarity of it all. She drags that coffin along the horizon with the sun, and as it beds down, so does she. Finding a nice place to rest and setting it alight with the same vitriol she did her last few venues.  
Her eye flutters closed as the mass of stalks pulsate and squirm out in every possible direction.

Nicolette remembers an awful lot of things in her brief dreams. She wakes and takes a sip from her canteen and loses herself again. She remembers the gunshot that shattered the crystal ball.  
She remembers the pleased look on the cat's face before noticing the bubbling red shard sticking out of her neck.  
She tries not to think about it. The lids around the stalks shudder. The other ones twitch tightly closed. Noises escape her unconscious body.

There's answers there at the tip of her tongue. Dancing together, escaping off to another plane of existence through pure bliss of being true.  
There's a faint plucking sound them answers dance to bring her out of her state. Her eyes drift open and there she sees her dead brother there playing a guitar that isn't there because neither is he there.  
At least, she reckons as much.

'Aint you dead?'  
Aint you? I got plenty of reasons to git the hell out of here, you'd think dead was one of them.  
'I aint no sucker. You's a mirage. Where'd you get that guitar?'  
Where'd you get that stupid face?  
'I knowed it. You aint real. I done killed you when I shot that window and we both knowed it.'

Thumbing the hammer back. Bang!  
A slug entering through her side and exiting out the other.  
Thumbing the hammer back. Bang!  
World shatters. Stabbed in the damned shoulder by her own damn brother in a rift between existences. Hot damn.

A hot shard of her reality tears down the right side of her neck and deep into her shoulder before she headbutts the assailant and puts a bullet between his eyes.  
She breathes heavily before tearing her own existence from herself.

Ya'll could say it was a rough morning. One to remember for many cycles to come, unless you was experiencing the same thing over and over and over again.  
And over and over and over again.  
Nicolette smiled as she done thought about the snake that didn't bite her.  
Hell, that snake didn't exist.  
It's just another part of her that pulsates and rots only in theory. Something she likes to celebrate every now and again.

Another sunrise on the horizon. She presses on past the smoldering embers she done made to keep her warm in the harsh cold night of the desert and though she finds every step kills her, that dead part transcends into something.


	5. spit i

_ _ _  
spit i 

* * *

When the gun went off, the crystal ball exploded.  
It was at that point everyone got their wish.

Ya'll may pontificate on what a wish constitutes, but I tell you what – they aint pontificating nothing as blood leaks from her gurgling fixture and she tries to say the most important words she ever said.

She don't, though. 


	6. Meander

_ _ _ _ _ _ _  
meander 

* * *

She's caught off guard when she sees the shadow breaking up over the dunes.  
She knows what she has to do so she lets go of the coffin and draws her pistol.

Slowly, she cocks the hammer back with her thumb as she tries to close her left eye around those stalks. She can feel them wiggling into her brain now. Unsure just how much left of the juice in this bottle is hers, she pulls the trigger.

Sand blows up at the shadow's feet. Drifting in and out of reality.  
She thumbs her hammer back, revolving the cylinder and she fires again.  
Repeat.  
She aint sure if he falled yet, she can't quite see.  
Repeat.

Falling to her knees in the sand, she feels like a snow angel.  
Merely an imprint on her land.

She tumbled before and it aint never been enough to stop her. The shadow is dark vapors. Still, she thumbs the hammer back and she fires again.

And maybe them eyes never opened again but some did. Off in the distance. Somewhere.


End file.
